March Highlights at a Glance
- Meeting the FLDOE Chief of Staff
- Professional Development Practice Run
- Seminar Coming to ABE YouTube Channel
Meeting the FLDOE Chief of Staff
Steve Koncar, Chief of Staff, Florida Department of EducationThanks to a warm introduction from Senator Danny Burgess after my visit to Tallahassee last month, I was able to have an initial conversation with Steve Koncar, the Chief of Staff for the FLDOE. We discussed what we have been building here at ABE, from professional development seminars that teach the history of digital assets and cryptocurrencies, to currently creating a curriculum that focuses on the basics of financial literacy and blockchain technology.
Mr. Koncar was quite interested in what we are building and agreed that these educational materials are needed in our increasingly digital future. He did warn me, however, that the Sunshine State will not be adopting any new academic standards until 2029 due to its five-year adoption cycle, which last happened in 2024. The encouraging insight he offered, though, is that if we continue to build relationships with lawmakers and school districts, ABE will be poised to be selected as blockchain experts to sit on the next adoption committee. Either way, it was encouraging to finally meet with the Florida Department of Education and now have a high-level contact with whom we can communicate our updates.
Professional Development Practice Run
Initial walk-through of our professional development seminarDespite the best efforts of our friends at Sarasota Schools, the one teacher who had originally signed up was unable to attend the seminar on the Monday after their Spring Break. Stella Karas, who originally coordinated our professional development session, suggested that we reschedule for their next organized professional development day so we have more time to properly advertise the course. In addition to this next regular offering, we are trying to coordinate an after-school opportunity for any interested educators in the coming weeks.
Not wanting to waste the scheduled time, however, my wife quickly jumped into the meeting so that we could conduct a practice run with our finalized seminar. It was quite beneficial to do so in order to learn how to pace the material in a shorter timeframe. With the seminar originally being built for an in-person delivery directly to students across three hours, getting through all of it at a high level in sixty minutes was eye-opening and informative, especially now that we are going to have an “on-demand” version of it online.
Seminar Coming to ABE YouTube Channel
New video layout of The Road to Bitcoin & Beyond seminarAfter an earlier strategic meeting with the rest of the Ardent leadership team, it was decided to bring in some professional help to produce the video version of the seminar. Luckily, one of the team members at Ardent, Reece, has been creating professional YouTube content for years. With the help of our internal graphic designer, Oleg, Reece created an initial draft video that uses various vantage points to insert video frames into the slides, thereby making them much easier to read and follow along for any educator, parent, or student who is interested in the material.
Our ultimate goal is to re-record the remaining modules and upload these to our ABE YouTube channel so that we can share these with school districts around Florida who would like to offer an “on-demand” version of professional development that links to a folder of all the related materials we have created. This will include the slide deck, both pre and post-self-assessments, as well as the standards crosswalk that shows how these materials relate to a number of courses within the Social Studies and Computer Science subject areas.
If you are reading this month’s update and would like to learn more about this particular version or would like to schedule an in-person or live version of this one-hour professional development, please email me at [email protected]
As always, stay tuned for our next update. We will have more great news to share, including links to the online professional development seminar materials and videos on our YouTube channel!
